How are Things?

Tag: grief

  • Sunday 9th November 2025

    Today my son had a play date. He met up with a friend from his gym and they went bowling.

    What was impactful to me was seeing the family home of his friend. Being in a family home hurts me. There were photos of smiling children on the wall. Rooms where things could be stored, and cared for. A fire place to rest in front of. And a husband, who wanted to be there. Who didn’t hate everyone and everything. Who didn’t hate his wife so much he became mentally ill. There were cheerful children who didn’t have their shoulders up, spines spiking with fear. There was a happy life being lived there.

    I’ve been sad all day, since.

  • Monday 28th July 2025

    I feel an awareness of anticipatory sadness; tomorrow the 29th marks two important anniversaries.

    It was the day I and my son were evicted from our home.

    And it was the anniversary of my wedding day.

    The two days are very far apart, as you might imagine. My wedding day was probably a day that saw a lot of people laughing at me. I was older than the average bride. And fatter, too. I can only guess at the sniggering my attempts at ‘blushing bride’ might have inspired. One thing that made the day particularly hard was that my mum was very, very sick. She had Early Onset Alzheimer’s and on the day wasn’t able to be there; in fact, I’m not sure she knew who I was.

    It is really hard to remember that. So much of that day was hard, and sad, and a struggle and I, I don’t know how to say all of it and keep going tomorrow morning.

    So I might leave that go, with just the comment that it is in itself a novel of sadness.

    And the eviction happened last year. My by then ex-husband left so much junk behind that I received a furious phone call that evening. I was shell-shocked and brutalized getting to my family home. They were so angry with me over the amount of junk he had left for them that they threw out all the things they had agreed to keep until my own sale closed. I saved what I could, it cost me hundreds, but there was so much lost; mementos, things from my son’s childhood, Christmas decorations…

    There had been a little mechanical teddy bear that read The Night Before Christmas. She had been exactly the thing my son loved each Christmas. And I lost her, and she got thrown out on a skip and forgotten, when I loved her so much.

    I got through all of last year with just grit and putting up with things. But somehow when I think of that bear, which I must have loved, I can’t but cry. They threw her out with a sense of anger, of disgust, and she was innocent of all of it.